CJ Hobgood and Jordy Smith power into Round 4 of Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach – Surfing News
America’s CJ Hobgood and South Africa’s Jordy Smith successfully made it into the fourth round of Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach, second stop of the 2012 Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Title Series, which continued at Bells Beach in Victoria,
Australia, on Thursday, April 5.
Hobgood confirmed his place in the next round after defeating Brazil’s Gabriel Medina in the ninth heat of Round 3, consequently removing the latter from the contention for the event title.
The 10th heat of Round 3 saw Smith emerge triumphant to make his place in the fourth round by getting the better of his fellow countryman Travis Logie.
The crowd kept getting treated to a heavy dose of thrilling surfing action as the world’s best surfers keep taking each other on in man-on-man battles for to ensure their survival in the competition. The surfing conditions turned out to be pretty challenging
on day 3 of the latest ASP elite tour event, with clean four-to-six foot waves breaking at Bells Beach but with low frequency.
Pitted against Medina in the ninth heat, Hobgood came up with an exquisite performance to take the win.
After going through a series of average scores, the American surfer posted a 7.77 on the score-board to take an upper hand. In the dying minutes of the heat, he managed to find a decisive 8.93-point wave to take his heat-total to 16.70 points, which held
up until the end to carry him to victory.
Medina came up with a pretty impressive response, scoring an 8.60 off his first business-wave and backing it up with a 7.00-point wave to finish with a heat-total of 15.60 points. The 1.10-point deficit however forced him to concede victory to his rival
while getting eliminated from the competition himself.
The 10th heat saw an outstanding performance by Smith as he took a comfortable win over Logie.
Smith caught his first business-wave almost halfway through the heat to post a 7.60 on the score-board and went on to add an additional 7.93 points to his account to finish with a heat-total of 15.53 points.
Logie caught a couple of five-point scores to finish with a heat-total of 10.96 points. The lacklustre performance led to his elimination from the competition while adding Smith to the Round 4 line-up.
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